5 Things Every Mechanical Student Should Know Before Appearing for IT Interviews

5 Things Every Mechanical/Civil/ Electrical/Chemical Student Should Know Before Appearing for IT Interviews

Many
of my friends are in the final year of their mechanical engineering. What I
have been hearing is that there are very less core field companies for
mechanical students. Students have also expressed that these core companies
require really high aggregates (65% -70%) with a good number of internships. In
such a scenario, it becomes very difficult for intelligent but average students
to get into these core companies.

In
such a competitive scenario, you must think of the backup options that you can
choose from. You can either go for management profiles, IT sector, teaching
jobs, BPOs(least recommended) and many others.

The
second best option left with the mechanical engineering students is IT
companies. The number of IT companies coming for recruitments in Engineering
colleges is huge. Therefore, this is a great opportunity for engineering
students to get into IT companies.

The
Multi-National Corporations such as Infosys, Cognizant, HCL, Accenture, TCS
recruit around 100+ students per college ever season since they have a very
high requirement. Therefore, these companies offer a huge opportunity for
mechanical engineering students.

These
MNCs love students from mechanical engineering background though IT/CS students
are their first preference. The problem with the mechanical students is that
they are not updated with the technology which keeps them behind their IT/CS
counterparts in getting selected for these companies.

5 Things Every Mechanical Student Should Know Before Appearing for IT Interviews

Here
we shall help you with the things that mechanical engineering students should
know before appearing for IT interviews on campus.

1.
Soft Skills

Believe
it or not, the MNCs focus too much on soft skills of the candidates appearing
for interviews. Their recruitment
process includes Group Discussion, Telephonic Conversation, Email
Writing and some even take Essay Writing. It is, therefore, important that you
should be well-versed with your soft skills and especially your English
speaking skills.

These
companies want the candidates to know how to interact with a client and talk to
them efficiently to generate business. Therefore, you must improve your English
speaking skills before you appear for these companies. Believe me, if you’re
good in English, there are 50% chances of you getting through the interview
process. For girls, this is an advantage.

2.
Aptitude and Logical Reasoning Ability

Being
an engineer, every company expects that you should be good in logical reasoning,
aptitude and analytical skills. The aptitude test is probably the first
parameter on which a company judges you and it is the first filtering round.

There
are 700+ students appearing for such MNCs at any given point of time. Hence,
these companies need to filter out the candidates. You must focus on improving
your logical reasoning and aptitude skills. For basics, a Quantitative Book by
R.S. Aggarwal is sufficient. It is more than enough to get through most of the
interviews.

Every
IT company requires that the interviewees should know at least at least one
programming language. The C Programming language is the first choice for every
programmer as it is easy to learn and is also in the curriculum of every
college. You should be well versed with the concepts of C programming language
perfectly. All you need is few websites and a few books to get good in this
programming language.

These
websites will help you to understand C programming and offer various
programming codes for free. The books mentioned above are available in every
college library. You must refer at least one of them, if not both.

4.
Company Research

It
is important that you do a research about the company before you appear for an
interview. Many times, candidates have no idea of what the company does and
what are their businesses. It is important to know who their CEO is, what
products does the company sell, and much more such details. You can easily get
all these details on the company website and Wikipedia.

The
interviewers have two favourite questions:

1.
What do you know about our company?

2.
Why do you want to join our company?

If
you do a proper research about the company, it will help you to formulate
answers to the above two questions in a way that will showcase your interest to
the interviewer in joining the company. It will also help you to decide which
company is suitable for you and which is not.

5.
Java Programming

Although
it is difficult for mechanical engineers to study different programming
languages, but Java is really important. Java is in high demand. People with
Java skills are the highest paid employees in MNCs. Java language is the base
for many high-end technologies.

If
you are good with C programming language, then learning Java is not a big deal.
Being a mechanical engineer, the advantage is that the company does not expect
you to be a very good programmer. You just need to know the basics.

One
week is more than enough to know the basics of Java programming language. You
should be able to solve some basic codes in Java which are frequently asked in
interviews. Here are some books that you should follow. These books will be
available in your libraries.

1.
Core Java – Rashmi Kanta Das

2.
Let Us Java – Yashwant Kanetkar

Apart
from the above-mentioned things, you must know about your own core stream too.
I believe that these things mentioned above will help you to ace any IT
interview on campus. IT jobs are a very good option after core field jobs for
mechanical students. There is a tremendous scope of growth in IT sector.